Portfolio — 4 May 2026
Attorney-General Michelle Rowland used two media releases on 4 May 2026 to advance distinct but thematically linked priorities: strengthening Australia's digital identity infrastructure and maintaining leadership continuity at the National Anti-Corruption Commission.
On identity security, Rowland announced that the Credential Protection Register — established in 2022 — has now blocked more than 750,000 fraudulent identity verification requests [TA-260504-attorn-1c289b1cf3c8]. A $14 million upgrade to the register enables participating issuers to update it in near-real time, closing the lag that previously allowed compromised credentials to remain active between manual refresh cycles.
Rowland also flagged a myGov trial, expected to launch in late 2026, that will let individual Australians choose to block or unblock their own identity documents — a consumer-facing control layer that sits on top of the register's existing fraud-detection capability [TA-260504-attorn-1c289b1cf3c8]. The scale of fraudulent requests blocked since 2022 is the headline metric here, and the near-real-time upgrade and the myGov trial together signal a further phase of the government's identity resilience agenda.
On the NACC, Rowland confirmed that Deputy Commissioner Nicole Rose has resigned effective 6 July 2026 and that a process to appoint a replacement will commence [TA-260504-attorn-e8bc0befd75e]. The release did not detail the reasons for Rose's departure or a timeline for the appointment process. The NACC has operated at the centre of public integrity debate since its establishment, and a vacancy at the deputy commissioner level will prompt scrutiny of how quickly the government moves to fill the role.
Taken together, the two announcements reflect the portfolio's dual accountability frame: protecting individual Australians from identity-based fraud through upgraded technical infrastructure, while sustaining institutional integrity at the federal anti-corruption body. No parliamentary activity was recorded for this date.
The official records this note draws on — the raw primary documents themselves, as published.